


Bears Believing

by treepyful (treeperson)



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: (i do not appreciate how aggressively that tag is capitalised), F/F, Magic, Plants, Post-Canon, Romance, Slice of Life, This Is Not An AU, or is she?, twyla is a kitchen witch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-14
Updated: 2021-01-14
Packaged: 2021-03-12 03:46:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28753851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/treeperson/pseuds/treepyful
Summary: "Honestly, Twyla’s really weird. Stevie knows this going in, knew since they were in school together and Twyla would bring mason jars full of bugs to show and tell, but it’s one thing to know and another to experience first-hand all the mystifying little ways the weirdness manifests."
Relationships: Stevie Budd/Twyla Sands
Comments: 21
Kudos: 28





	Bears Believing

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to write kitchen witchery and Twyla seemed like the obvious choice. I also wanted to write Stevie/Twyla with as little childhood angst as possible, so this is also that.
> 
> Small c/w for menstruation and related cramping. Nothing intense, but it’s there and talked about.
> 
> Title from Fleetwood Mac’s “[Crystal](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdHh_D_b5xU)” (written by Stevie Nicks and featured in _Practical Magic_ \- how could I not?)

It’s the morning after her fourth time staying over at Twyla’s when Stevie sees the bottle for the first time. She’s rifling through the medicine cabinet in the washroom, searching for something to take the edge off her hangover, when she knocks over the little brown glass bottle and just manages to save it with a lucky flinch of her hand. It’s tiny, only about the size of her thumb, but heavy enough to suggest the glass is substantial and Stevie turns it over in her hand with the vague hope that it’s just some hippie version of liquid Advil. The label, yellow and peeling, just has the hand-written word _cl.ex_ on it in age-bleached ink, which is exactly zero percent helpful so Stevie tucks the bottle back onto its shelf without another thought.

“Twyla, why don’t you have any ibuprofen? I’ve never seen a medicine cabinet without it.”

Twyla sticks her head into the washroom, her smile sweet and endearing despite Stevie’s scowl. “Want some tea instead? I’ve got a blend that’ll do better than any pill from the store.”

Stevie presses her thumb into the bridge of her nose. _Tea_. “Sure, okay,” she says, because she’s attempting this new thing called _trying_ and it’s working thus far – Twyla hasn’t dumped her yet.

The tea does, in fact, do better than any pill. Twyla just waves off Stevie’s questions about what’s in the blend, calling it an old family recipe and distracting her with kisses and pancakes.

Stevie sees the bottle three more times – twice in the medicine cabinet, once empty and drying upside down in the dish rack – before she starts really wondering what it is. Twyla’s got a lot of weird stuff in her house, tchotchkes tucked into corners and dried plants hanging from door frames, but this little brown bottle keeps catching Stevie’s eye, dusty and seemingly untouched in its little corner of a busy and well-used cabinet.

“What’s clex?”

Twyla looks up from her book, head tilted like a confused dog, and Stevie struggles not to find that fucking adorable. “I don’t know,” she says, wide-eyed. “What is clex?”

“Well, I’d hope you’d know, it’s in your washroom.”

Twyla blinks and Stevie fetches the bottle. “This,” she says shortly, tossing it to Twyla, who catches it against her chest.

“Oh!” Twyla laughs, propping her book open on the nightstand beside her. “Clex! That’s funny! No, it’s just shorthand for ‘clove extract’!”

Okay. “Why do you have clove extract in your medicine cabinet?” Stevie asks, moving into the room and perching on the edge of the bed near Twyla’s feet.

“It’s good for sore teeth. The most common dental anaesthetic is made from the same compound as what’s in cloves, so it’s legit.” Twyla shakes the bottle slightly for emphasis, then opens it and waves it under her nose. “Smells good, too.”

Stevie leans over to smell when prompted and agrees – it smells like Christmas spice and alcohol, which is giving her slight flashbacks to family holiday parties, but it’s nice all the same. “Do you get a lot of toothaches?”

“No, of course not! I have the clove extract.” Stevie gives her a blank look and, when she doesn’t elaborate, follows it up with a wrist-twisty _please continue_ gesture. “Well, if you have clove extract, you won’t get a sore tooth. It’s preventative, like carrying an umbrella so it won’t rain.”

“So, what, you put it on your teeth every night?” That doesn’t seem right. Stevie would have noticed that smell, that taste, if that were true.

“Nope! I just keep it in the cabinet. Need to replace it every year because it gets full up and then it doesn’t work as well, but I haven’t had a tooth problem since I started keeping it around.” Twyla beams. “It’s a huge cost saver, though my dentist is my aunt’s ex-step-brother, so I’d probably get a discount anyway.”

Stevie stares at the bottle in Twyla’s hands, trying to puzzle through the logic of simply keeping a sealed bottle around to, what, act as a ward against tooth pain? Maybe it’s simply a placebo? Maybe it’s just another of Twyla’s quirks, one of those things that make her _her_ and which Stevie is finding more and more captivating every day she’s with her.

But, as Stevie slowly learns, there’s a lot more to Twyla’s quirks than she first lets on.

* * *

Honestly, Twyla’s really weird. Stevie knows this going in, knew since they were in school together and Twyla would bring mason jars full of bugs to show and tell, but it’s one thing to know and another to experience first-hand all the mystifying little ways the weirdness manifests.

The plants, for one. There’s a whole plants _thing_.

Twyla’s back garden is an overgrown mess, with weeds running rampant and vines crawling over barriers and paths. Stevie waits a few months after she first sees it, wondering if and when Twyla would tend to it, before reluctantly offering to help clear it away. Twyla just laughs and takes Stevie by the hand and shows her all the plants and their uses. Crushing catmint between her fingers and holding it up for Stevie to smell, she explains how weeds are in the eye of the beholder and how she beholds nothing but beauty. Looking down at Twyla where she’s crouching among the herbs, Stevie can’t help but agree.

Their dates often start or end with them walking down by the creek, or in the woods, or through fields on the edge of town, with Twyla picking various weeds and showing them to Stevie. Stevie, who is still _trying_ , affects an interest stronger than she actually feels, and Twyla braids them flower crowns out of the dandelions that don’t make it into her foraging bag.

Stevie starts noticing the weeds growing in the cracks of the sidewalk, along the edges of the buildings around town. Plantain, she thinks as she walks, her head tilted down with purpose instead of posture. St. John’s wort. Pineapple weed. Wood sorrel, yarrow, and purple aster. Slowly, almost unintentionally, the little plants start ending up in Stevie’s messenger bag, tucked carefully into crevices until she can give them to Twyla. Twyla always treats the plants Stevie gives her like they’re made of gold, turning them into balms and teas and salves and the prettiest bundles to hang over her front door.

Stevie rescues a patch of colt’s foot from Patrick’s enthusiastic garden weeding on a late summer afternoon, carefully clipping the down-soft leaves away from their green stems and ignoring David’s running commentary about scrounging in the dirt. That night, when Stevie haltingly asks Twyla to show her how to dry the leaves, Twyla gives her the softest doe-eyed look Stevie’s ever seen and then kisses her within an inch of her life. Stevie does eventually learn how to dry the leaves, but not until the next morning.

* * *

As the warm weather fades, Twyla’s activities shift to match. There’s less gardening and stargazing and field wandering, but more knitting and preserving and journalling. Stevie isn’t one to pay much attention to the time of year beyond changing her wardrobe and taking her stat holidays, but she finds a deep sort of comfort in Twyla’s demonstrative slide from one season to the next. There’s something about cuddling up on Twyla’s old loveseat and watching her knit while the rain patters against the storm windows that settles Stevie even on her most harried days.

When Stevie’s birthday rolls around at the beginning of November, Twyla presents her with a small squishy package wrapped in brown paper.

“Twyla, you didn’t ha—”

“As if I wouldn’t,” Twyla scoffs, giving her a soft look. “Take it.”

It’s a pair of red mittens, woolly and warm and the exact same colour as Stevie’s hat. Stevie is speechless.

“Do you like them?”

Stevie knows her mouth is hanging open, but she can’t close it. Instead, she turns the mittens over and over in her hands, quietly marvelling at their existence until her finger catches on a hole at the edge of a cuff.

“Jesus fuck, did I rip them already?” Stevie thrusts them back at Twyla, horror ripping through her stomach. “Oh my god, this is why you shouldn’t make me things.”

“Oh! No, babe, it’s okay!” Twyla wraps her hands around Stevie’s over the mittens, slender and warm. “I always leave a little hole in everything I knit! That was already there.” She flipped down the cuff on the other mitten to show an identical hole. “See?”

The subsiding panic leaves behind a bitter taste in Stevie’s mouth. “You leave a hole in your knitting? Why?”

Twyla nods, curling Stevie’s fingers around the mittens. “When you knit for someone you love, you leave a piece of your soul tangled up in the yarn. So then you leave a mistake, a hole for it to escape through and come back to you.”

Stevie freezes. Most of Twyla’s explanation goes in one ear and out the other, Stevie’s thoughts stuck whirring around the first few words that came so casually out of her mouth. _Someone you love_.

“My grandmother always said that my mother never leaves holes in her knitting,” Twyla continues, light and maybe a little sad and on a completely different train of thought than Stevie. “Which explains a lot, really.”

“Um.” Stevie almost loses her words as Twyla’s eyes snap to hers. “For, uh, for someone you love?”

Twyla tilts her head, which still reminds Stevie of a dog, and draws Stevie in for a kiss with a single finger under her chin. It’s answer enough.

They’re both smiling when they pull away, Twyla’s red cheeks matching the warmth Stevie can feel on her own. Her heart is racing with joy, but she doesn’t think she can say it back, not directly, not yet. She wants to say _something_ , though, and the first thing that comes to mind is what falls out of her mouth.

“Do you think you can show me how to knit you something?”

Twyla’s smile grows bigger, bright enough to light up the bedroom despite the grey of the late autumn afternoon, and Stevie’s stomach flutters with a thrill that is as novel as it is terrifying.

* * *

There isn’t much pharmaceutical access in Schitt’s Creek, just what's found on the limited shelves at Brebner’s, and the drive to Elmdale to find a proper selection of cold and flu medications is daunting while fevered and sniffling. Stevie assumes this is the bulk of the rationale behind Twyla’s phone ringing off its figurative hook the moment the first seasonal viruses start winding their way through town. Twyla always answers with her trademarked smile, cheerful and sympathetic at once, before bustling off with her jars of soup and bags of tea, making the rounds as efficiently as any country doctor of a hundred years ago. She always refuses payment, which Stevie secretly thinks is probably a very good idea for legal reasons, but that doesn’t stop her front porch from becoming the landing pad for various gifts of gratitude – they don’t have to buy a bottle of wine all winter, and Stevie discovers that Bob is a surprisingly gifted baker.

When the arrival of Stevie’s period coincides with the onset of a particularly wicked head cold, she only gets about four hours of miserable solitude before Twyla is knocking on her door, all beseeching eyes and earnest offers of help that Stevie is just too weak to turn down. Twyla instantly makes for Stevie’s kitchen nook and starts pulling assorted containers and bundles of plants out of her bag, shooing Stevie back to bed when she half-heartedly tries to play host. Stevie dozes to the quiet sounds of rustling and clinking and pouring, and starts awake when Twyla sits on the edge of the bed to hand her a mug of gently steaming something.

The tea tastes like the smell of soil after a summer rain, peaty and fresh, and Stevie buries her nose into the mug to breath in the steam. Twyla lays a rice-filled hot bag, which is cut from the same soft sage green material as Twyla’s apron at home, on Stevie’s lower abdomen and it’s warm and heavy and stuffed with lavender and mint and chamomile. When Stevie finishes the tea, Twyla hands her another mug, this one filled with a rich broth that Stevie reluctantly but dutifully drinks in sips that slowly turn into gulps as her appetite comes to life. 

Then Twyla brings over a series of tiny vials and applies the unidentifiable oils within to different points on Stevie’s exhausted and sore body – something warm on her chest, something bright on her stomach, something brassy on the bottoms of her feet, and something earthy in a line across her forehead. Stevie’s almost asleep by the time Twyla’s gentle massage peters out, so she almost misses the low humming Twyla starts as she curls up beside Stevie on the bed, one hand resting lightly on Stevie’s cramping abdomen. Stevie wants to ask, wants to know how Twyla knows all this stuff and whether it actually works, but she’s pulled into sleep before the words can become anything more than wisps of thought.

The head cold turns out to be a twenty-four hour thing, and Stevie is completely recovered by the next morning. It’s also the first ever day two of her period where her cramps didn’t wake her up before her alarm. Nuzzling against Twyla’s hair where it’s splayed over her pillow, Stevie puts it down to being lovingly tended to for the first time in a very long time.

* * *

The first time Twyla asks that Stevie leave her dill pickle chips in her car rather than bring them into her house, she thought she was just in a mood and didn’t want to deal with the smell (which, yeah, valid). But when Stevie tries to bring them over again a couple of nights later, Twyla’s smile goes a little stiff as she politely asks that they stay outside again. She doesn’t like dill’s energy, she explains, which becomes yet another thing that Stevie just mildly absorbs without question. They have a good night, the chips stay outside, and Stevie doesn’t try to bring dill into Twyla’s house again.

However, she discovers that dill isn’t the only problematic plant while trying to calm Twyla down in the storeroom of the café during the Christmas party.

“Why won’t she listen to me?”

Stevie holds her hands out, unsure of whether she should be trying to catch Twyla as she paces. “Well, you did just sort of start yelling at her out of the blue, Twyla.”

“I wasn’t yelling!”

She was. “You’re yelling now.”

Twyla stops dead and drops her face into her hands, the skirt of her Christmas dress swirling around her knees. Stevie falters, second-guessing herself, but then Twyla’s shoulders shake and Stevie is there, pulling her into a hug and pressing kisses to her temple.

“It’s my café,” Twyla whispers, wet against Stevie’s shoulder. “If I don’t want Jocelyn to decorate like that, then she shouldn’t do it.”

Stevie rubs Twyla’s back. “It’s just mistletoe, Twyla.”

“I hate it so much,” she gasps, clutching at the pendant around her neck. She’d turned startlingly pale when she confronted Jocelyn about the hanging bunches of greenery and has yet to recover her colour. “It saps all the light out of the room.”

“Babe, you need to breathe. Deep breaths.”

“It’s just _vile_ ,” Twyla chokes out, her hand trembling against Stevie’s breastbone where they’re pressed together. “Its heart is so... rotten. It makes me feel hollow.”

“Okay. Okay.” Stevie doesn’t understand – it’s just a bit of stupid decorative plant – but she knows she doesn’t need to, not really. “Do you want me to go get rid of it?”

The shuddering breath Twyla takes flips Stevie’s stomach upside down. “Yes, please.”

As Stevie pushes through the swinging doors, beelining for Jocelyn and her handfuls of mistletoe, she realises that this doesn’t feel like _trying_ anymore.

* * *

There’s a rhythm to Twyla’s life – when she washes certain things, when she switches out the herbs pinned to her door frames, when she replaces the egg buried under the path leading to her front door (what the fuck) – that Stevie finds hard to predict. It seems almost in sync with the rest of the world, but just _not quite_ in a way that is deeply frustrating. It’s not until Twyla mentions something about cheese always tasting best if made during waxing gibbous when it clicks and Stevie feels like a fool for not putting it together earlier: Twyla follows the moon, a lunar calendar.

With that detail realised, Twyla’s habits all suddenly fall into a pattern that Stevie can recognise. Her refusal to bake with any pitted fruits always falls on the dark half of the month, and Stevie learns to use caution in playing with Twyla’s hair around the full moon for fear of dislodging the sprig of rosemary woven into her braids. One quiet evening, Twyla explains her recipe matrix for the Meadow Harvest smoothie to Stevie, going on at length about the various strengths of different fruits and vegetables and herbs at different times in the lunar cycle while Stevie listens in charmed bemusement. The songs Twyla quietly sings to her plants and her ferment mothers and the spiders that live in the ceiling corners all change with the phase of the moon, and Stevie thinks she’s just about got the pattern down pat for what gets sung to who when by the time they reach their first anniversary.

* * *

If Stevie had to pick a favourite from the things Twyla made in the kitchen, it would be a tough competition full of regrets and unfair comparisons. However, her brown bread would undoubtedly win. It’s a rich molasses bread, hearty and dense and tangy-sweet, and Twyla always claims that she traded a Mennonite woman a hand-carved wooden spoon for the recipe; Stevie still can’t decide whether to believe her. Regardless of how she learned to make the bread, Twyla makes a loaf every Sunday without fail, and it’s one of the few of her rituals that falls to the common calendar instead of the moon.

Before she moved in, Stevie often spent her Sundays at Twyla’s and so has watched her make the bread dozens upon dozens of times. Stevie’s always been a good observer and a quick learner, which is why she feels that she’s absorbed enough know-how to tackle the bread herself when, on Stevie’s third Sunday living in what is now _their_ house, Twyla is called away for an emergency at the café.

Overconfidence, thy name is Stevie Budd.

“I tried to bake your bread,” Stevie explains, trying her best to keep the exasperation out of her voice as Twyla slips out of her sandals and peers around the jumbled kitchen with concerned eyes. “And, like, it’s _fine_. It’s edible and whatever. But it doesn’t taste like what you make.”

“Okay.” Twyla comes to stand beside Stevie and they both look down at the misshapen loaf cooling on the rack. “Will you walk me through what you did?”

So Stevie does, and Twyla nods along and asks the occasional question, and then suggests that they make another loaf together. 

“You got it mostly right, Stevie,” Twyla says as she sifts the dry ingredients together. Stevie hands her the molasses next and watches as the drizzle rolls down the flour hill. “There’s just a few key things you missed.”

“Like what?”

Twyla tips the yeast water in and mixes everything together with quick efficient strokes. “The kneading, mostly.”

“I kneaded!” The right amount, she’s sure – she timed Twyla once.

Turning the bowl upside down, Twyla shakes the dough out onto the counter with a thick _plop_. “I know! And you did so well! There’s just a trick to it. You’ve got to knead it in the shape of a heart.” Stevie blinks. “Just trust me, love. The heart’s the way to go.”

Twyla starts kneading the dark sticky dough, her right hand stretching it to the upper left alternately with her left hand to the upper right. The impression it leaves behind on the floured counter is roughly heart-shaped, and Stevie carefully watches how Twyla’s surprisingly strong arms work the mass into something slightly more manageable.

“Your turn,” Twyla says, wiping the back of her wrist over her sweat-damp forehead. Stevie hands her a tea towel and takes her place in front of the dough.

“The other secret to kneading,” Twyla whispers, tucking a strand of Stevie’s hair back behind her ear as she starts in on the dough, “is the love you put into the bread.”

Stevie pauses. “What?”

“Keep kneading,” Twyla tuts. When Stevie resumes, frowning but willing to see where this is going, Twyla continues. “Think about who’s going to eat the bread, Stevie. You, of course, and me. I’ll probably take some over to Ronnie tomorrow, since she’s having a bad week. We can take some to David and Patrick too, if you’d like. I’m sure they’d love it.”

“Why am I thinking of this while kneading bread?” Stevie’s breath is coming a little harder now, the elasticity of the gluten fighting back with every push and stretch.

Twyla leans her hip against the counter, clicking her tongue in thought. “Kneading is a rhythm, a beat, and you can add rhythmic thoughts to the bread if you tie them to the motion. Thinking of love, of the people who are going to enjoy the fruits of your labour, is the best way to infuse the love into the bread itself.”

So Stevie does as asked, thinking of her close friendship with David and Patrick, of Ronnie’s reluctant yet fond nurturing of little Stephanie Budd, and of Twyla’s almost tangible love for the people in her life. But once the dough is smooth and glossy and Twyla takes over to efficiently tuck it into a ball and plop it in the proofing bowl, Stevie’s doubts come to the fore.

“What?” When Stevie shakes her head, schooling her expression away from whatever it was that prompted the question, Twyla just puts her hands on her hips. “What, Stevie?”

Stevie huffs out a little breath. “I just don’t see how my thoughts can change the taste of the bread, is all. I know I’m not the expert in the kitchen here,” she adds with a deferential nod to Twyla, who looks coy, “but it doesn’t seem possible.”

Twyla taps a flour-covered finger to Stevie’s nose, leaving behind a streak of white Stevie can see when she crosses her eyes. “Lots of things are possible that don’t seem it.”

“Believing bread into tasting better is a bit of a reach,” Stevie replies, settling a cloth over the proofing bowl and moving it to the stretch of counter near the oven.

“It’s just a little bit of magic, Stevie.”

Stevie snaps her head up. “Magic?” She feels her eyes widen with a dawning realisation, a thousand threads of memory weaving together into a full tapestry for the first time. _Magic_.

“Well,” Twyla says, opening her arms wide and twirling around on the balls of her bare feet, the sole point of movement in their bright and welcoming kitchen. “Something like it, anyway.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to [doingthemost](https://archiveofourown.org/users/doingthemost) doing a read through and catching my tense issues! And to [houdini74](https://archiveofourown.org/users/houdini74) for the spark that got this idea going!


End file.
